Forty Under 40

Emily Amato, 32

Director of Emerging Industries,
Cuyahoga Community College

Emily Amato always knew she wanted to help people improve their lives, but she wasn't sure how she was going to do that. Now, three degrees later, she's doing it at Cuyahoga Community College, helping develop programs that help people get jobs.

Ms. Amato is director for emerging industries at Tri-C's work force and economic development division. The division is the branch of the college that offers short-term training programs, employer-sponsored training programs and continuing education for health care professionals.

After earning a bachelor's degree in psychology and sociology at Cleveland State University, the Brecksville-Broadview Heights High School graduate set off for New York City, earning a master's degree in public administration at New York University and then a master's of science in education degree from Hunter College, a branch of the City University of New York.

She taught in fifth through eighth grades for three years in New York City before returning to Cleveland with her New York-born husband, Allesandro, in 2006. She won a Gund Foundation fellowship and spent the next two years getting “a 50,000-foot view of the Cleveland nonprofit and economic development communities,” Ms. Amato said.

“I had the opportunity to be introduced to nuances of the city I never even knew about,” she said.

At the Gund Foundation, she came to the conclusion that the region won't achieve its economic development goals without a work force that is learning new skills.

“Emily is one of those rare people who has an equally good mind and heart,” said Marcia Egbert, a senior program officer at the Gund Foundation, who watched Ms. Amato step in to manage the foundation's work with environmental organizations when a program officer left for another job. “(Tri-C) is lucky to have her.”

After Gund, she found a job at Tri-C, doing the kind of work she now realizes she wanted to do.

“I was really excited when I got here,” she said in her office in the Unified Technologies Center on the Tri-C metro campus.

At Tri-C, she is particularly enjoying the opportunity to help the college develop programs in advanced energy. A key part of that effort is developing a “green academy” to train people for the next generation of jobs, such as wind turbine technician. She hopes to get involved with developing the curriculum for programs related to green buildings, including a program to train people to audit the energy efficiency of buildings.

“We're getting people to be competitive (for jobs) in new industries,” she said.